"Who do you say
that I am?" Jesus asked. Simon Peter answered, "You
are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus
answered, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! ... You are
Peter(petros), and on this rock(petra)
I will build my church..." Jesus then began to speak of
the rough road ahead. And Peter took him aside and rebuked him... "Get
behind me, Satan!" Jesus replied. "You are a stumbling
block..."(Matthew 16:13-23)

May these words of this Peter be like a rock,
not a stumbling block!

"Teach us to
Count our Days"

Message preached November 17, 2002
Long Green Valley Church of the Brethren
Glen Arm, Maryland USA
based uponPsalm
90:1-12

Home...
One of the families in our church moved this week. Boxes of possessions were
packed and carried from one house to another. Furniture was carted away by
muscular men until all that remained were the floors and walls of a dwelling
place that soon would be possessed by another family... "Teach us to
number our days," the psalmist prays... The husband and father relives
the moments which transformed this house into a home over the last decade or so
- A new marriage. Children born. Diapers to training pants, squeeky balls to
soccer balls. Echoes of words spoken, love expressed, mistakes made, forgiveness
shared. A wistful sigh through one last night. The wife and mother, seeing with
hope the days ahead, says "the best is yet to come."

"A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening
gone,
short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun."

Home...
The last place I saw my father alive was his hospital room. Gone was the
seminarian training to be a pastor. Present was the son who had no idea what to
say or do, who could only sit at the foot of the bed in silence and listen.
Words of release were spoken... "Teach us to number our days."
So says the Psalm... "Did I really accomplish anything?" wondered my
father, who was too young to be old. "Itís in somebody elseís hands
now." Did he mean my hands? A question was then asked, whether by
seminarian or son I do not know: "Dad, what is your favorite hymn?"
This man who couldnít carry a tune thought a bit, then replied. "O God,
our help in ages past."

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream soon bears us all
away.
We fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day."

Home... A
Bridgewater college student recently sent a note out to a bunch of her friends,
a copy of which also ended up in my e-mail box. In it, this young woman - who at
one time, Iím sure, couldnít wait to go away to college - writes of being
overloaded with work and having to drop a class... "Teach us to number
our days." Thereís that verse again... "I will be home for
turkey," this Brethren young adult writes with obvious longing, "and
then I will be home for Christmas around the 11th of December. So the
semester is coming to a close and itís about time!, yet it came REAL quick
which only proves the older we get the faster time goes. Doesnít seem very
fair...." (from a real 11/12/02 email, name withheld)

Isaac
Watts penned those verses nearly three hundred years ago, basing them on the 90th
Psalm. There were several years, following my fatherís death, that I just
couldnít sing that hymn. It was too packed with meaning. Like the Psalm from
which it was derived, it can be a bit depressing to sing. Itís a lament, after
all, both the hymn and the Psalm. Watts wrote the words to his song at a time of
uncertainty in England, "when it was feared that the Protestant monarchy of
Queen Anne would be followed by that of her Catholic brother, with ensuing
religious persecution." 1
We donít know the historical setting for Psalm 90, but the prescript says it
is "A Prayer of Moses, the Man of God." One commentator
suggests it be heard as though Moses were praying it at the end of his earthly
life from Mt. Pisgah, overlooking the promised land he would never enter.
2 If true, neither of those occasions were exactly
"happy days."

And yet,
there is about both Psalm and song a quality that transcends whatever situation
may have caused the words to be composed. Yes, "O God, our help in ages
past," is often sung at funerals. But it also is a favorite hymn to sing on
the first Sunday of a new year, a setting fresh with hope. And, granted, Psalm
90 also is appropriate to read at the time of death. However, it is more than
that. I can still hear echoes of composer Charles Ivesí rendition of it, which
I sang with my college choir at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 26
years ago. I was nowhere near the "end" of anything at that point in
my life, but those words touched me deeply.

"Lord,
you have been our dwelling place in all generations..." Perhaps itís
this affirmation that shifts what could be a fairly negative list of struggles
in the verses that follow into a song of faith. Thereís a truth here that goes
deeper than any outward circumstance. We are not homeless, we have a home. This
home is to us a gift, that is - all the hard work in the world could
not make a dwelling like this. It is a place where we truly belong. The
home-maker of this place is God. Not only that, but God is this home. It is not
so much a place, as a person.

That makes
sense, doesnít it? Think about what makes your house a "home." Is it
the actual building? Is it the "stuff" packed inside? Or is it
something more personal? Take away all the "stuff," would it still be
"home?" Yes, it takes labor to create a "home," but that
sense of attachment, that feeling of belonging has little to do - ultimately -
with work. A child does not create a home. He or she enters into it. Home is
where she or he is loved unconditionally. It is personal. Strangely enough, the
existence of this child helps make a house a home for the parents. Itís
personal. My motherís cottage in Bridgewater is "home" to me only
because she is there.

This first
verse of Psalm 90 sets the stage, really, for prayer. To make it personal, letís
put it this way: "You, Lord, are my/our true home. Always have been. Always
will be." That affirmation puts everything into perspective. Even that
person for whom faith is something brand new, who knows very little of the
things of God as yet, who wasnít raised in a church "home," whose
family "home" growing up had little connection to "psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs;" even for that person those words are like both
a fresh revelation and something that resonates deep down. "Lord, you are
my true home."

Itís
this place which is a person that makes the first step of faith possible. For
those who would believe in Christ, that step is "repent and be baptized..."
(Acts 2:38). "Repent" means "to turn,"
"to turn back." If you donít have a point of reference, a place to
turn back to, that step has little meaning. You turn every which way but loose
in a frantic effort to find the right direction. The presupposition of faith is
that "your true home is God." Thatís where you really belong. It is
for God, your "dwelling place in all generations," that your
heart yearns. Repentance, then, becomes "turning your heart toward
home."

Because of
that, this Psalm is not really a depressing lament over troubling circumstances,
some of which we may have brought upon ourselves down through the years as we
have turned from our real home and wandered about with empty hearts and hopes.
No, this Psalm is like a touch-stone for us, placing our life into proper
perspective.

We have
limits on our earthly existence. What else is new? Only, our present generation
- perhaps like most generations which walked before us - is hard at work trying
to change the inevitable. We extend the time beyond the poetic "threescore
years and ten" perhaps even beyond "fourscore" (90:10
KJV), and then discover new ailments that come with a longer life.
Believe me, Iím not making a case for shorter lives. Iíd like to live longer
than my father did. Iím very thankful my mother is alive and well at age 85.
The issue is not quantity of days, but quality. And quality depends upon where
the heart finds its home.

The
pivotal verse in the Psalm is the one you find printed at the top of your
bulletin. Would you read it out loud with me? "So teach us to count our
days that we may gain a wise heart." (90:12) Teach us to number our
days. Now, that doesnít mean, "do the math." Scripture here isnít
calling us to become preoccupied with quantity, to play statistician with our
days and years. The measure of a personís life is not its length, but its
depth. And that depth depends upon putting our days and years into perspective -
being in touch with where we truly belong.

Wisdom is
not an accumulation of knowledge, or even the ability to sort through that
knowledge intelligently. Wisdom is a sense of perspective. A "wise
heart" is one that knows where and to whom it belongs. "Lord you
have been (you still are, and always will be) our dwelling place."
Thatís the awesome "big picture" from which all wisdom flows.
Sometimes that awareness absolutely overwhelms us. We donít have to be on our
deathbed, though, to be so overwhelmed by our sense of belonging to God, that in
the Lord we find our true home. Every day can be filled with such awareness.
Therefore, "teach us to number our days." Teach us to live, not just
to exist, that our hearts may be in the right place.

The theme
of our worship this day has been upon the stewardship of time and talents. A
steward, in the biblical sense, is not the owner of a home. A steward is someone
who is entrusted with that which he or she does not possess. Wisdom is key for a
steward. Making wise use of what belongs to someone else is the goal. The Bible
teaches that, "the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world,
and those who live in it" (Psalm 24:1).
Everything we have, including our very lives, belongs to God. I donít want us
to get so wrapped up in trying to figure out what ten percent of our income, or
what a tithe of our time or our ability might be, that we lose track of the most
essential truth upon which all of that depends. All that we have been, all that
we are, and all that we will be, is from the Lord. The Lord is our true home.

What we do
with what we have been given matters, but only to the extent that we place it
all into perspective. In an age of materialism, we struggle not to be possessed
by our possessions, to not be enslaved by the clock, to not place our abilities
on the throne and say, "if wecan do it, wewill
do it." The truth is, "the Lord is our dwelling place, our real
home." We belong there. Our possessions, our time, our abilities - they are
all a gift from heaven above. Not just a portion, but all. When, on earth, we
have that sense of belonging, that this is my "home," this is but a
reflection of your eternal home in God. Furthermore, each and every day is a
gift, no matter how many. So, Lord, "teach us to number our days, that
we may gain a wise heart." Amen, let it be so!